


Like a Bird on a Wire

by semperama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men are supposed to come home and do what Dick has done—find a respectable job, do it respectably well, embrace life as a civilian because it’s vastly preferable to those years full of death. They aren’t supposed to flounder and fumble and feel the way Nix feels, like he left the best parts of himself in some command post in war-torn Europe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Bird on a Wire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [jouissant](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant) for all her help and encouragement along the way. <33

Nix expected everything to be different. He didn’t think that when Blanche met him at the dock she would be wearing the same hairstyle she was wearing the last time he saw her. He didn’t think he would remember the city streets so well, or that the towering skyscrapers would be so familiar, or that he would get such strong sense memories from the specific smell of the back seat of a cab—leather and stale cigarette smoke and the faint medley of the perfume of hundreds of women. New York is so enmeshed into the fiber of his being that he assumed when he changed, it would change too. But here it is, exactly the same, like he never left. Like the war never happened.

It doesn’t comfort him. It makes him angry, in fact, and he spends the whole ride to The Plaza with his hands clenched into fists on top of his knees, his face turned toward the window. His sister doesn’t seem to notice. She prattles on about the inconsequential things he missed until the sound of her voice becomes white noise, just like the hum of the city outside the window. It isn’t until they pull up to the curb that he feels obligated to pay attention to her again.

“You’re sure you don’t want to stay with me, Lew?” she asks, putting her hand on his knee.

He has no doubt it’s a sincere offer, but he shakes his head at her. “I’ll be fine here. I’ve got dinner with Dad tomorrow, and I know you don’t want to be roped into that.”

Blanche wrinkles her nose, then leans in to peck him on the cheek. “Good luck with that, dear.”

He presses her hand between his and musters a halfway sincere smile. It really is good to see her, and he’s glad he had a familiar face to look for when he got off that boat. But right now, he doesn’t think he can handle her and her mundane gossip and the way she is trying so hard to act like she doesn’t know what to say to him.

“I’ll give you a ring in a few days,” he says. “After I get settled.” He isn’t sure what “settled” means, but he knows people will be expecting him to do it.

She takes her hand back and waves it magnanimously. “Take your time.”

Nix submits to one more kiss, then takes that as his cue to exit the cab. He gets his bag out of the back and turns back to give Blanche a little wave just before the car pulls out into the stream of traffic again. Alone now but for the steady flow of strangers passing by, he feels suddenly like a child. He’s sure that someone is going to get one look at his face and ask him if he’s lost, if he knows his address. He tugs down the brim of his hat and hurries inside.

The hotel bed is too soft, and even copious quantities of whiskey can’t knock him out enough to sleep on it. It’s too quiet, and it’s not quiet enough. The sounds are all wrong.

He’d had trouble settling down at night back in London too, but there had been more distractions there at least—other soldiers to drink and gamble with. Back there, he could almost convince himself Dick was in the next room, waiting to shoot him a look full of equal parts amusement and disapproval in the morning. Here, he is painfully aware that Dick is an ocean away. They were in each other’s pockets pretty much every day for four years, and now it’s been weeks since Nix last saw his face. It’s starting to feel like he dreamed it up.

When he closes his eyes, he feels like he should be seeing explosions and red-stained snow and muddy faces. Instead he lays there and stares at the inside of his eyelids and tries to conjure the exact shade of red of Dick’s hair. He doesn’t sleep, but it’s as good a way to spend the time as any.

———

The next few weeks Nix spends mostly in solitude. He insists on remaining at The Plaza, despite attempts from both his sister and his father to get him to come stay with them. Blanche’s offers get less and less enthusiastic as the days pass though, and Stanhope’s were half-hearted to begin with. The old Nix would have had no qualms with inflicting himself on them anyway, but he isn’t the old Nix anymore. 

Part of him does long, in a juvenile way, for the comfort of family, but they are no comfort to him now. The first thing he learned when he arrived stateside was that his was not the only marriage that had fallen apart. It is a sort of consolation to learn that these things run in the family, as he can almost convince himself that it wasn’t his fault. He has a genetic predisposition—to drink, to running around on his wife, to losing said wife. His mother is somewhere in Florida, staying with friends who probably also have divorced their rich-but-distant husbands. He imagines them all sitting under palm trees, sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them and trying to regain their lost youth. None of them, and least of all his mother, will catch any blame from him. But when she sends him one letter, expressing her happiness that he made it home safely and imploring him to visit her, he folds it up and tucks it in the bottom of his sock drawer without answering it.

Daddy Dearest provides about as much relief as a cup of watered-down, lukewarm coffee on a morning in Bastogne—which is to say, comforting in its familiarity but leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Stanhope Nixon didn’t fight in the Great War, so there is no understanding in his eyes when he looks at his son. Luckily for Nix, he doesn’t ask about it either. He does ask when he’s coming to work, and Nix is forced to wave him off, insisting he still has affairs that he needs to set in order here first. The truth is his head is still somewhere back in Europe, huddled with Dick in a foxhole or watching the plane he just jumped out of explode in a ball of fire and shrapnel.

And Blanche—Blanche means well, but she doesn’t exist on the same plane as he does anymore. When they get together for lunch, her laugh seems too loud and her lipstick too bright. There is a frivolousness there that he doesn’t think he noticed before—and if he had noticed it, he doesn’t think it would have bothered him. It’s not her fault. It’s his own damn fault. He should be able to adjust easier than this. Shouldn’t he? He should be grateful to be home.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Whether he likes it or not, eventually the real world is going to suck him back in. Its pull is too strong, just like the pull of war had once been. He wants to go back and sock that younger version of himself in the teeth, the one who thought that he had a duty, and that it would make him feel like an honorable man. Now Nix knows there is just no honor in him, no matter where he is or what he’s doing.

———

It’s the letter from Dick that miraculously infuses him with gumption again—at least for a little while. Dick will be back in the States by Christmas, but he’s spending the holidays with his family, of course. Then, he’s coming to Jersey, to Nix. _The job offer still stands, right?_ he writes. It’s funny how he seems to think Nix wouldn’t move heaven and earth to get him a spot at his side, right where he belongs.

Blanche is over the moon when he asks her to come down with him and help him pick out a house and put it in order. Their father owns a couple apartments near the nitration works that he’d certainly be willing to house family in, but Nix thinks about Dick going home to his parents’ farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, and he feels like shoving him into a cramped apartment when he gets here would be cruel. Jersey might already be a culture shock.

“Don’t you think he’ll want to get his own place?” Blanche asks him on the drive down.

“Oh sure, eventually, but I don’t want him to have to worry about it right away.” It’s mostly true, so Nix isn’t sure why he feels guilty when he says it.

They end up picking out a cozy one-story craftsman that looks like it was plucked right out of the pages of a Sears catalog. It’s the kind of house Nix could have seen himself moving his family into one day, which means it’s probably a bad idea for him to be buying it with Dick in mind, but he doesn’t care. Blanche seems unfazed anyway, and that’s good enough for Nix. If she thought it wouldn’t make sense for two bachelors, he thinks she would say so. Instead, she wanders from room to room purring like a happy kitten, stroking the walls, declaring it a fine choice.

The next few days are a parade of furniture trucks. It baffles Nix how quickly it’s possible to turn the shell of a house into a home when you have a little money to throw around. He thinks about all the towns in Europe that are probably still cleaning up rubble, and he’s struck anew by how far away this world seems from that one. While burly hired men are shuffle past him with another table and Blanche flutters around giving directions, Nix feels like he’s standing still and the world is revolving around him.

When the very last truck has come and gone, and all the necessary accoutrements have been unpacked and put away, he and Blanche sit out on the front steps and smoke.

“Are you glad to be home?” she asks him, her voice resigned enough that Nix has to wonder how long she’s been sitting on the question.

He isn’t sure what possesses him to answer it honestly. “Not yet.”

Blanche has her hair tied up in a handkerchief and her neck is speckled with sweat, despite the November chill. One curl of hair has snuck out of its prison to hang over her face, and it sways when she expels smoke from her lungs. Nix thinks this is the closest he has felt to her since he got back. It’s the closest he has come to feeling the same way about her as he did before he left.

“Do you think you will be glad? Eventually?”

She isn’t looking at him, and he’s glad for that at least. In her mind, he probably has very valid reasons for not being happy yet. She probably has imagined up some trauma that he can’t shake, or a general war-induced malaise. Nothing a little dose of the real world can’t fix. Or failing that, a high-priced psychoanalyst .

“Yeah, of course,” he says, even though he isn’t at all sure that it’s true. “It just takes some getting used to is all.”

Nix picks up the tumbler of whiskey sitting on the step between them and takes a long drink from it, ignoring Blanche’s sideways glance. She has always been a bit of a drinker herself. Hopefully she won’t begrudge him his.

“If you ever want to talk,” she offers.

It’s sincere, but it gets under his skin anyway, and he has to take a long drag off his cigarette before he answers, so he can be sure he won’t say something stupid.

“Thanks,” he says as he exhales. “But I’m fine, really.”

———

The headlights of the bus shine through listless flurries of snow. Nix has his collar turned up and his hands shoved into his pockets, but he’s not that cold. He knows what cold is, and this ain’t it.

A middle-aged man gets off first, followed by a pretty blonde woman holding the hand of an equally pretty blonde girl. The unfamiliar faces seem to keep coming forever. Nix has time for a fleeting and irrational fear that he might not even recognize Dick at all. Maybe he looks completely different on American soil, wearing civilian clothes.

He’s the last damn person off the bus, and isn’t that just like him to sit in the back and make Nix wait? But the feeling in Nix’s chest isn’t irritation. Though his face feels stiff from the cold air, he’s grinning from ear to ear all at once. When was the last time he smiled like this? He can’t even remember. It takes an unreasonable amount of willpower to stay put and let Dick come to him.

“I thought for a minute you’d changed your mind,” he says when Dick shuffles over, bags in hand.

“Nope,” Dick says, simple as that. His nose is red from the cold, and Nix gets a quick flash of sitting in a tent together in Belgium, hunching over steaming tin cups and trying in vain to keep warm. This time and place is nothing like that one. For one, Dick is out of uniform and smiling at him. For another, Nix feels suddenly warm as can be. He slaps Dick on the shoulder and then reaches for one of the bags, which Dick lets him pick up without protest.

“Well, welcome to wonderful Nixon, New Jersey.” Nix gestures uselessly around them as they walk toward the car. Asphalt and dirty snow. What a picture. It’s hard not to feel a little self-conscious, like he should have cleaned it up or made the weather play nicer just for Dick’s arrival. He should have found a way to make the sun come out, even at 10 o’clock at night.

“Nice of them to send a member of this prestigious Nixon family to welcome me himself.”

Nix laughs helplessly as he sets the bag down and goes to open the trunk. “Nothing but the best for a war hero.”

Dick’s eyebrows twitch at him, but other than that his expression is inscrutable. He hoists his bag into the back of the car, and Nix follows suit with the other one, and then there is nothing left to do but in the car and drive. Drive home.

The snow is sticking, but on the road it has mostly turned to brown slush. Flakes fly at the windshield, glittering in the headlights like they’re driving through a field of stars. Nix is surprised he still has it in him to think poetic thoughts about snow, but Dick is sitting next to him, looking out the window like he’s drinking it all in, so the impossible has already happened. He wonders what other impossible things might happen now.

“How’d Christmas with your family go?” Nix asks, snatching glances at Dick out of the corner of his eye.

Dick swivels his head toward him slowly, like it takes effort. “Oh, you know.”

The words hang there in the air until Nix fears he’s going to have to tell Dick that no, he doesn’t know. But then Dick speaks up again.

“It was good. It was good to be home.”

It’s strange, not having a ready-made conversation topic in the form of where they’re headed next or who just died or how the men are doing. Nix almost opens his mouth to ask if Dick has heard from any of them since he got back but then decides against it. It seems too soon to bring those two worlds together—the one that existed overseas and the one that exists here, in this car.

“What about you?” Dick asks. “How were your holidays?”

Nix snorts. “Great. Just great. It was just me and Dad, but hey, who needs a bunch of family hanging around anyway?”

What he doesn’t say is that his version of Christmas was racing his father to the bottom of a bottle. Blanche had decided to go down to Palm Springs to visit their mother, and she’d invited Nix to go too, but he didn’t think he could do palm trees and sunshine and Doris’s fussing. So he stayed in New Jersey and invited his dad down and did a passable job of pretending there was no holiday at all. There was no tree. It seemed fitting, since there was no tree for him last year either. When the clock struck midnight, when the snow was falling outside the window, he had thought about going outside in sitting in it, maybe even digging a hole in the ground, for old time’s sake.

He sent a little money to Kathy, and she sent him a picture of the baby in return, which joined his mother’s letter in the sock drawer. No way is he sharing that tidbit with Dick either though. If he’s curious about how all that shook out, he doesn’t ask. In fact, he doesn’t ask anything else on the rest of the drive, just stares out the window. His silence makes Nix’s palms itch, but he can’t bring himself to say anything to break it.

They pull up in front of the house and get the bags out of the back, but then Dick pauses, squinting through the dark toward the front door. Nix watches snowflakes collect in his pale eyelashes and melt on his cheeks for a beat too long.

“You alright?” he asks.

“It’s a lot of house just for you, huh?” Dick says.

Nix barely manages to turn his reflexive wince into a grin. “It’s not just me now, is it?”

“Oh. Well.” Dick shoots him a little sideways glance. “I wasn’t planning to impose on you for too long. I thought I’d get my own place once I got settled.”

Of course he would. Nix knew that was going to happen eventually all along, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to ask Dick to stay with him now. Maybe that’s a bridge they can cross when they come to it though. Maybe Dick won’t feel much urgency to leave for a while.

“Let’s worry about getting you settled first then,” Nix says, and thumps Dick’s shoulder, ending on a squeeze. His hand falls back to his side with some reluctance, then leads Dick up the front steps and into the house.

As they traipse through the foyer in the wan glow of the lamp on the table, Nix watches Dick’s face for his reaction. There isn’t much of one. He looks tired mostly, and maybe a little uncertain, like he doesn’t know what to think quite yet. At least Nix isn’t alone on that one.

“It’s not much,” Nix says as he flicks on the light in the front room. The grand tour won’t take long. “Kitchen’s that-a way. Dining room’s over there.” He jerks his head at Dick and then leads him down the hall to where the bedrooms are. “I’m down there at the end. We’re sharing a bathroom, I’m afraid.”

Dick lets out a quiet breath, not quite a laugh. “I think we’ll manage.”

They come to the door to Dick’s room—the room Dick will be sleeping in, he mentally corrects—and he pushes it open and shuffles inside. It’s pretty spartan, just a double bed and a tall wooden dresser, but every time Nix tried to pick out more furnishings, he’d ended up stumped. For all the time he’s known Dick, they have been in barracks or billets or worse, and it was hard to imagine how he’d fix up a room if he had a chance. The one personal touch Nix allowed himself was the dark red quilt that covers the bed. He felt Dick deserved something sumptuous, something not drab. When Dick walks over and runs his fingers across it absently, Nix chalks it up as a win.

His feelings of triumph fade when he realizes that now they are just two men standing in a bedroom at night.

“I hope this is okay,” Nix says, shifting his weight from one leg to the other and back again. “I wasn’t sure if—”

“It’s just fine, Nix,” Dick cuts in. His expression is warm, a smile that includes every part of his face but his mouth. “Thank you. For the job, and for putting me up. You didn’t have to, you know.”

That’s just the thing. He _does_ have to. He felt like he couldn’t draw a full breath for the past four months, and now that they’re together, there is air in his lungs again.

“Don’t mention it.” Nix makes himself shrug it off, his eyes not quite meeting Dick’s. “Anyway, you might want to wait until you actually start work to thank me. I mostly asked you here because misery loves company.”

Dick chuckles at that. “Well, I’d say sharing in misery is the default state of things for us, so I’m sure it’ll work out just fine.”

Nix hopes that’s the real explanation for this feeling in his chest. It’s just that he doesn’t know how to trudge through miles of shit without Dick at his side. The transition to the life of a soldier was easier with Dick there, and it feels like the transition to civilian life might be easier with him there too.

It’s late, so Nix leaves Dick to unpack with instructions to yell if he needs anything. Back in his own room, he sits on the edge of the bed and listens to the muffled sound of footsteps, of drawers opening and closing, of the water running in the bathroom. Eventually he peels off his clothes and stretches out flat on the bed, ears still straining for every little noise. He thinks maybe he’ll get some good sleep tonight, knowing that Dick is just two doors away.

But after some time, silence settles over the house again, and Nix is still awake, wide awake. He counts the seconds, the minutes, until he thinks Dick might be asleep, then climbs out of bed and eases open the door. He holds his breath as he passes Dick’s room.

It’s just nerves, that’s all. It’s just excitement. His hands tremble at little as he opens the door to the liquor cabinet in the living room. This is nothing his old friend Vat 69 can’t cure. And tomorrow, when things are more settled, he’s sure he’ll feel better.

———

Dick is different in the morning. Not different from the previous night, but different from anything Nix has known of him. He isn’t the Dick that would emerge from a tent or a foxhole looking harried but impossibly well-groomed. He also isn’t the Dick that sprung out of bed back at Toccoa before anyone else, bright-eyed even when he knew he’d have to run up Currahee in the pre-dawn light. Dressed in civvies and fiddling with the coffee maker, this version of Dick looks domestic in a way Nix never imagined he could be, a way that sets his heart fluttering.

“Here, let me do that. You’ll break it,” Nix says, covering his embarrassment with irritation as he gently elbows Dick out of the way. “What are you up so early for anyway?”

“You’re up,” Dick counters. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the kitchen counter, watching. Nix hates it when he watches. It makes him feel itchy in his skin.

Maybe _hate_ is a strong word.

“Yeah, well. With you rattling around in here...”

Nix hasn’t had a shower yet and he’s feeling a little out-of-sorts standing there in his pajamas and house coat when Dick is all slick and pristine. There isn’t even a wrinkle in his trousers, and God only knows how he managed that without an iron. Or hell, maybe he snooped around enough to find an iron. Did Blanche buy one? Nix can’t remember.

“You know you don’t really have any food here, right?” Dick says as Nix fishes mugs out of the cabinets. “What’ve you been eating since you got back?”

“I just forgot to shop before you got here is all,” Nix lies smoothly. The truth is that he’s pretty much been living on bacon sandwiches. It’s not even that he can’t cook. He just hasn’t had the will, and he figures after all that time with no bacon—no _real_ bacon—he’s earned the right to eat as much of it as he wants. Frowning, he opens the breadbox, but there’s nothing left in it.

“I’ll go this afternoon,” Nix says.

“I’ll go with you,” Dick counters, like he expects a challenge. But Nix shrugs permissively, forcing a grin.

It’s Sunday, but after Nix showers and dresses, they decide to head to the plant first to get Dick acquainted. Nix knows how much he likes to be prepared, and this is better than sitting around staring at each other.

He fills the silence on the drive by telling Dick everything there is to know about Nixon Nitration, starting with his grandfather, continuing through the 1924 explosion, and ending just before Stanhope took things over—before the war. There isn’t much to say about his father’s reign. As far as Nix knows, he was more or less an empty suit—and still is. Nix is confident he’ll be able to follow in his footsteps in that regard.

“What’s your role in all of it?” Dick asks.

“Cock of the walk,” Nix says, fighting the sheepishness that threatens to creep into his expression. “Dad’s been looking for a reason to check out. He’s all too happy to share his responsibilities.”

He can feel Dick staring at the side of his face, but he makes him wait for a while before he tears his eyes away from the road to look at him. Dick is giving him that look, the one where it’s obvious the next thing out of his mouth is going to be pure heckling.

“And what do you know about running a nitration plant?” he asks, straight-faced but for that twinkle in his eye. Nix loves that twinkle.

“I didn’t know anything about killing Germans either,” he says as he returns his attention to the road.

“You didn’t kill any Germans.”

“Exactly.”

Civilization thins out as they get closer to the river. The water winds a flat, sluggish path parallel to the road, peeking at them every now and again through gaps between houses and naked trees. Nix turns off the main road just as the faded red brick buildings of the nitration works come into view, and he can almost feel Dick’s gaze boring a hole through the windshield.

“Doesn’t make a very pretty picture, does it?” Nix asks as he swings into the lot and parks the car. His voice sounds apologetic to his own ears.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Dick murmurs.

Nix would call him a liar, but when they get out of the car, Dick lingers and looks. He puts up a hand to shade his eyes against the sun reflecting off the snow on the riverbank, and his shoes rasp against the pavement as he swivels this way and that. Curious, Nix looks with him—out over the stretch of white between them and the silvery ribbon of water, at the trees across the way with their individual bouquets of frosted branches. He turns and looks up at the nearest building and notices that the brick doesn’t seem so washed-out when contrasted with the snowy ground. Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

“Come on,” Nix says, before he lets himself turn his eyes to Dick’s profile haloed in morning sunlight. “Let’s get you the tour.”

It’s not a very proficient tour, Nix has to admit. The plant covers several acres and over a dozen buildings, but Nix limits them just to the three nearest the parking lot, which are the only ones he’s found need to set foot in so far anyway. The amusement seems to radiate off Dick in waves as Nix treats him to gems like _These are the tanks that hold something that’s probably important_ and _Here is a really dangerous-looking machine that you couldn’t pay me enough to touch_.

“You are aware that you do pay men to touch it, right?” Dick asks, his eyebrows going up.

“Sure,” Nix says. “And anyway, it’s all very safe these days. We learned our lesson, you know.”

Dick nods at him, but somehow it comes across like an eye roll. “Of course.”

They circle back to the first building they went in and go up two flights of stairs. One more flight up would bring them to Nix’s father’s office, which is empty more often than it’s occupied. Down here on the third floor, there is a short hallway with offices on both sides. The biggest one is Nix’s; it says Senior Vice President all official-like on the door. And across from his is the office that will belong to Dick. Nix made sure that they were going to be close together, logistics be damned.

“Here we are,” Nix says as he pushes open the door.

It’s nothing special, really. The walls are bare, and the only furniture is the desk and chair in the middle of the room and the bookcase on the back wall. There is one small, square window, and it doesn’t let in much sun, so most of the light comes from the fixtures overhead. Again, Nix feels embarrassed. He should have been able to do better than this. It’s hard to imagine Dick being happy confined in this room, signing payroll checks and reviewing schedules.

He bites his tongue before he can rush to apologize, and chooses to watch Dick instead. Dick steps into the room, does a slow turn, walks over to the window. Nix happens to know that the view overlooks the river, which hopefully is at least a small blessing. When Dick turns around again, he’s not smiling, but he looks like he wants to.

“Thanks for this, Lew,” he says, with a sincerity that’s uncharacteristic for them, for the way they talk to each other. 

Nix rubs the back of his neck and says, “Don’t mention it,” and he means it. He hopes Dick never brings it up again.

Because he didn’t do this for Dick—not really. He did it for himself, for an excuse to keep him close. For all his worrying that Dick doesn’t think he can survive without him, it’s closer to the truth than he wants to admit.

———

It’s about lunchtime when they leave the plant, so Nix takes Dick to a diner nearby. He still can’t get used to the fact that Dick is _here_ , sitting across from him pouring sugar into his coffee. Maybe that disorientation is to blame when Nix forgets himself and takes his flask out of his pocket and tips whiskey into his own mug. The look Dick shoots him nearly makes him freeze in place, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but there’s nothing to do now but play it off like it’s nothing.

He pockets the flask again and lifts the mug to his face, inhaling the steam. His mind is working out the perfect light-hearted quip while his heart pounds away in his chest, but before he gets a chance to speak, Dick beats him to it.

“The Vat 69 followed you home, huh?” he asks, his voice far too casual.

Nix grimaces. “What, you thought I only picked it up over there?”

“Didn’t seem like you were much for it at Benning or Toccoa.” Dick takes a careful sip of his coffee without breaking eye contact. It’s Nix who looks away first.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t conducive to rolling out of bed at oh-dark-thirty for PT.”

That’s more or less the truth. That and the fact that it was harder to smuggle in liquor under the watchful eye of men like Sobel. If he goes through a handle faster now than he did before he enlisted, well, that’s understandable, given the things he’s been through. He doesn’t need Dick giving him a hard time about it.

So he speaks up again before he gets a chance. “Do you think you’ll like it? Working for us?” he asks. “Tell me straight.”

Dick looks amused at that, his mouth slanting into a not-quite-grin. “What’d you think I’d do after the war?”

“I didn’t much think about the ‘after’ part, to tell you the truth.” He pauses a moment to consider it now though, then gives a little shrug. “I don’t know, Dick. I just don’t want you to feel like you owe me something.”

“I’m not here because I feel like I owe you something.” The words hang heavy in the air for a moment, and heavier still when Dick tears his eyes away. “Anyway, the only thing I know how to do is lead men, and I figure men at a factory can’t be that much different than men on a battlefield.”

Nix lets out a low whistle that ends on a chuckle. “You’re wrong there, my friend.”

The corners of Dick’s mouth turn down a little bit. “I think I’ll get on just fine. I might look into taking some management classes, to bring myself back up to speed.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t think you’d get on fine,” Nix says. “I don’t imagine there’s much you wouldn’t excel at.” He can feel his face heating up before the sentence has fully left his mouth, and he takes a quick drink like that’ll hide it.

He suspects that Dick will enroll in classes whether he needs them or not. He also suspects that in a matter of weeks, he will know more about nitration than Nix does. Dick’s competence has never been a question. Just his happiness. But maybe Nix is spending more time worrying about his happiness than he should be.

“All I’m saying is that you won’t hurt my feelings if you decide you’d rather do something else,” he says.

Dick shakes his head minutely and lets out a little huff. “Lewis, I’m here because I want to be.”

The next rush of blood to his cheeks is thankfully overshadowed by the waitress appearing with their food. Nix can’t remember the last time anyone called him by his full first name; it was probably his mother and probably many years ago. It sounds good on Dick’s tongue, so good that he keeps replaying it while they eat, keeps glancing at Dick’s mouth and remembering the shape of it. He tries not to think about what he might do to make him say it again.

———

Hiding his drinking isn’t hard. There are bottles stashed in his office, in the bottom drawer of the dresser in his room. It’s just one more thing that’s uncomfortably different after the war; Dick used to be the only person Nix felt wouldn’t judge him for it, but now he’s the one he has to hide it from, save the one glass he drinks openly after dinner every night.

How Dick doesn’t feel the need for a drink himself after a long day at the plant, Nix doesn’t know. After years of never knowing what the next day would bring, the mindless drudgery of office work feels like a special kind of torture. Nix starts to feel like climbing the walls around lunch time every day, and whiskey and cigarettes are the only things keeping him from doing it. How does a man with no vices cope?

But Dick seems to not only be coping, but thriving. Just as Nix predicted, after a couple weeks he seems to know the production process as well as the floor supervisors, if not better. He also knows at least twice as many names as Nix does, which is equal parts embarrassing and unsurprising. Nix doesn’t care to learn them, but he starts making more of an effort anyway, because he doesn’t want Dick thinking less of him.

And that’s an uncomfortable thought too, that Dick could think less of him. The farther they get from V-E Day, the more Nix realizes that he was actually a pretty damn good intelligence officer. He is, however, an unquestionably bad manager. A lot of it is due to apathy, he knows, but that apathy seems so intrinsic to who he is that he can’t remember how he overcame it in Europe. Was it because he had lives in his hands? Was it because he enjoyed strategy and he doesn’t give a damn about running a nitration plant? Or was it ineffable, some random convergence of time and place and circumstance that made him apply himself in a way he hadn’t in a long time?

It doesn’t really matter, because whatever it was, it’s gone. Nix feels hollowed. He wonders if he condensed all the feeling allotted for his lifespan into the three years and change he was a soldier.

“Do you ever write to the men?” Dick asks one night when they’re sitting in the living room after dinner. Nix has a tumbler half full of whiskey, while Dick is sipping water.

“I wrote to Harry once,” he says. “Right after I got back stateside. I’ve thought about writing Lip and Ron too, but...I don’t know. I’m not great with letters. Why? You write them much?”

Nix hasn’t missed Dick’s occasional trip down the front walk to the mailbox, but they’ve been overly cautious with each other’s privacy, so it feels like it would be uncouth to mention it now.

“Not too much,” Dick says. “And not all of them. I was their commanding officer. The relationships aren’t always...easy.”

“I’m sure they’d all love to hear from you,” Nix says. Commanding officer or not, he knows all the men loved Dick. And things are different now. The ranks have been dissolved. Hell, Nix is technically Dick’s superior now, and isn’t that a laugh?

“I’ll probably write to them all eventually. I have their addresses. I just want to give it a little time first. Let them all settle in.” Dick stares at the fire burning in the hearth. He’s seated a few feet away on the corner of the loveseat, while Nix has claimed the armchair closer to the fire. He’s too hot and keeps tugging at his collar, but he can’t bring himself to move. If he gets up, he might just find himself sitting down in the space beside Dick.

“Have _you_ settled in?” he asks, his mouth running away with him. “I mean, do you feel…”

He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, but apparently Dick gets it, because he looks over at him, and his eyes are full of understanding. “It’s okay to miss it, Lew.”

Nix sucks in a sharp breath, then tries to disguise it with a laugh. He wasn’t expecting Dick to cut right to the heart of the matter like that, and he doesn’t know what to say. So he turns it around. “Do you miss it?”

Dick stares at Nix for a moment, then looks away again, back to the fire. “I’m trying not to.”

Just hearing those words makes Nix think there’s a chance he’ll be okay after all. It’s enough to know that he isn’t alone. “Yeah,” he says quietly, tightening his grip on his glass. “Yeah. Me too.”

———

Dick has been working at Nixon Nitration for a month when Nix’s father shows up for the first time. He’s been in New York, doing God only knows what, obviously confident that his son could carry on without him in his absence. Truth be told, Nix would have preferred he stayed away. He isn’t sure he’s ready for Dick to see how short the apple has fallen.

But he wasn’t consulted, so all he can do is deal with it—and he doesn’t deal with it well. He takes Dick up to the fourth floor to introduce him to Stanhope before lunch, but it turns into the three of them heading to the diner together. Dick is perfectly polite, full of “yes, sir; no sir” charm, and Stanhope seems to like him well enough, but Nix feels like he’s suffocating the whole time. He nibbles at the corner of his sandwich and tries not to flush with secondhand embarrassment when his father asks about Dick’s life in Lancaster as if he came from a different planet.

“He’s been doing a fine job, Dad,” Nix says when he gets a chance, catching Dick’s eye and shooting him a tight smile. “Everyone seems to like him.”

Stanhope looks like he wants to preen, like hiring Dick was his idea. “I’m not surprised. He’s a war hero, after all.”

As if that has anything to do with his job now. As if he’s the only one. Nix pouts into his coffee, ignoring the concerned look Dick shoots him.

Back at the office that afternoon, he keeps pouring himself drinks until he’s lost track of how many he’s had. When Dick stops by at the end of the day so they can walk down to the car together, he takes one look at Nix and says, “I’ll drive home.”

They ride back to the house in silence, but Nix can feel the urge to speak rolling off of Dick in waves. He doesn’t pry. If Dick has something to say, he can damn well say it, but until then, Nix doesn’t need another reason to feel like dirt. He’s doing a fine job of beating himself up as it is.

The silence lasts until a few steps inside the front door, when Dick puts a hand on Nix’s shoulder, stopping him from going to hide in his room.

“Everything alright?” he asks, his voice light.

“Just dandy,” Nix replies. “There’s nothing like having dear old Dad around again.”

Dick raises a skeptical eyebrow, and suddenly Nix’s throat feels dry again. He glances toward the kitchen, to where he knows he can find a fresh bottle of whiskey. How long before Dick heads off to another part of the house so Nix can sneak in there for a nip?

“He didn’t seem so bad, Nix,” Dick says, drawing Nix’s attention back to him.

“And here I thought you were a good judge of character,” Nix drawls. He shakes off Dick’s hand and turns away, heading for the kitchen after all. If Dick is going to disapprove, so be it. He probably already disapproves.

Dick’s footsteps follow him, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything when Nix takes down a glass and sloshes a few fingers into it either. Nix doesn’t look at him, but he can imagine the expression on his face—restrained reproach.

“You said before that I wouldn’t hurt your feelings if I decided to do something else,” Dick says, speaking slow, like he’s choosing each word carefully. “You know that you could choose to do something else too, don’t you?”

Nix snorts at that, then takes a gulp from his glass. “And what else would I do, Dick?” He looks at him, finally. The reproach he’d been expecting is there, but there’s something else too, something that looks like concern. It makes the whiskey go sour in his mouth, so he washes it away with another mouthful. “I knew this would be my life from the time I was a boy. I am my father, just like he was his father. Even enlisting couldn’t change that.”

It isn’t until he speaks those words that he really admits to himself that he didn’t think he’d come back. He thought he would die over there, but he didn’t, barely even saw combat—and, irony of ironies, he also found a pretty damn good reason to live. A reason who is standing right in front of him.

“The war was my escape hatch,” he mumbles, speaking to his glass now. “And it didn’t pan out. So maybe I didn’t think this far ahead. Maybe I didn’t have a backup plan.”

The silence stretches until it’s excruciating, but Nix waits it out. He has said more than enough for one night. Finally, Dick takes a step forward, and his hand reaches out to curl bracingly around the edge of the counter. Nix’s gaze follows the taught line of his arm to his face.

“You know, I didn’t think much about what would come after the war either,” Dick says. “I didn’t think about what I’d do.”

Nix frowns, confused, but he waits. The way Dick is looking at him has him pinned to the spot.

“I didn’t think about it until you offered me a job, Lew, and then it was all I could think about.”

The words take a while to sink in, and even when they do, Nix can’t believe they mean what they appear to mean. It still feels like some cosmic fluke that Dick is here. No matter how many times he says it, Nix can’t think he came because he wanted to. He blinks at Dick, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do, whether this is the time to crack a joke. Too many seconds have passed for a joke though, and possibly too many seconds have passed for him to say anything useful, either .

Finally, he chokes out a soft, “Damnit, Dick.”

There are only two good steps between them and Nix isn’t sure who crosses them. Dick curls one hand around Nix’s glass so he can remove it to the counter and wraps the other around the side of his neck. He has touched Nix like this once before, when that stray bullet hit him in Holland, and the look in his eyes now is almost the same. Nix has to fight the urge to tell him to cut it out. He’s not really sure he wants him to.

Even with the way Dick was looking at him, it’s a surprise when he leans in and presses their mouths together.

If Nix were more sober, he might have jerked away in shock. At least, he likes to think he would have, because the way he sinks into it and clutches Dick’s shirt like a swooning girl seems highly uncharacteristic. Dick’s hands come up to frame his face before he can even thinking of moving though, and he can’t keep back a muffled sound of shock and awe. For a moment, Dick kisses him harder. Then, all too suddenly, he is a few steps away again.

“What was that?” Nix says dumbly, raising his fingers to touch the warm spot Dick’s palm left on his cheek.

“You’re not dead,” Dick says. “And you wouldn’t be better off if you were.”

“I—” For once in his life, Nix doesn’t know what to say. He takes a step closer and starts to reach out again, without even knowing what it is he wants to do, but Dick takes one careful step out of reach.

“You’re drunk,” he says.

“But you’re not.”

Dick shakes his head. “No.”

This doesn’t make sense. Nix can’t process it. He can’t imagine a world in which Dick kisses him on purpose. “How long have you been...?”

“Since I got off the bus and saw you standing there,” Dick says evenly. He might as well be discussing the weather. “Maybe even before that.”

Nix’s brain rebels even harder at that. He shakes his head and scrubs a hand across his jaw, trying to come up with some believable reason why Dick would be lying to him, or in lieu of that, a reason why he would _want_ to kiss him. But he comes up empty. What’s more, he’s starting to panic. Hysteria is bubbling up the back of his throat, threatening to make its way out of his mouth in some no-doubt mortifying way. He wishes he could pick his glass up off the counter without drawing Dick’s attention to it.

“What do you want from me?” he asks, even though he’s sure the answer doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have anything to give Dick that’s worth giving. Not a thing.

Dick’s mouth opens, but no words come out of it. Maybe he didn’t get this far in his head, to what comes next after he rides in like a knight in shining armor to rescue Nix from his existential angst. And that—that hesitation—is enough to tip Nix over the edge.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says. He means to sound angry, but it comes out tired. “Just forget about it, Dick.”

He runs, then. Like a coward. He brushes past Dick and walks out of the kitchen, all the way down the hall to his bedroom, where he shuts the door and then stares at it, expecting Dick to come busting through after him. But he doesn’t. Nix counts the ticks of the clock until he hears Dick’s footsteps start to move around the kitchen, then the sink running, probably washing the rest of Nix’s whiskey down the drain.

Nix wishes he would have grabbed the glass and brought it with him. He needs that drink now more than ever.

———

Nix dreams about the shape of Dick’s mouth and wakes up knowing he won’t feel it against his ever again. Dick’s future is with some wonderful woman who’ll pop out a passel of red-headed rugrats, not with this damaged drunk who’s been clinging to him a little too desperately. Somewhere along the line, after all the time they spent together, Nix must have dirtied Dick up by association, but given a little time here in the real world, things will go back to normal. Everything will go back to normal. They just have to wait for the war to slough off.

In the morning, he nearly collides with Dick in the bathroom doorway. Dick’s skin is damp, and his hand feels strong and steadying when it comes to rest on Nix’s shoulder out of reflex. But Nix shrugs it off and mumbles an apology and steps aside, refusing to meet his eyes. He can feel Dick looking at him, assessing him, but mercifully he moves past Nix and into his bedroom to finish getting dressed.

The ride to work is quiet. Not the comfortable quiet they have shared so many times before, but something weighty, a silence that presses down on Nix and makes him feel pinned. For once, he’s happy to see the looming brick buildings, and even happier when he and Dick part ways to go to their respective offices.

He doesn’t even make it until noon before he pulls the half-empty bottle out of the bottom drawer of his desk and pours himself a glass. And of course, just as he’s lifting the damn thing to his mouth, the door opens and Dick pokes his head in.

“Hey, you have a minute?”

Nix can’t exactly hide, so he goes ahead and takes the drink he was in the middle of, then puts the glass down again and gestures for Dick to come in. “For you? Always.”

Dick doesn’t smile at that. His eyes are on the glass. He shuts the door behind him, then walks over to Nix’s desk and sets a folder down. “I have some recommendations about payroll for you to look over. I don’t think some of the men are getting compensated fairly. Some of our best workers are making next to nothing and haven’t had a raise in years.”

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re your employees,” Nix says, waving his hand at the folder like he can make it vanish that way. “Pay them what you think is fair. I trust your judgment.”

“Actually, they’re your employees, Nix,” Dick says. “And so am I. Don’t you want a say in this?”

Nix picks up his glass again, without even thinking about it. “I had my say when I got you the job.”

Dick watches him take a drink, his eyes narrowing a little in scrutiny. Nix is caught between the desire to take a bigger gulp in defiance and the desire to dive under his desk just to avoid what’s coming next. He settles for staring Dick down, daring him to say something.

“Look, Nix—”

But as soon as Dick starts talking, Nix realizes he doesn’t want to hear what he’s going to say after all. He may have come here under the pretense of a business conversation, but the spectre of the previous night is looming over them, and Nix afraid of what might come out of Dick’s mouth if he brings it up now. So he holds up a hand and preempts him. 

“If you’re worried about last night, we can just forget about it. I’m not pinning all my hopes on something you didn’t mean to do.”

“You think that was some kind of accident?” Dick asks, his voice strangely incredulous.

“I think you regret it,” Nix says. “This is me, Dick. I’m the guy who drinks whiskey before noon and doesn’t give a shit about his business. If you’re expecting more than that…”

“I’m not expecting anything,” Dick says, and takes a little step to the side like he’s thinking of coming around the desk to get at Nix. He stops himself though, and Nix can see him summoning his control, can see the way his shoulders straighten minutely and his arms go stiff at his sides. “And I don’t regret anything.”

Nix doesn’t know how he’s supposed to believe that. It feels like the ugly parts of him are on full display now, and he can’t imagine Dick seeing all of it and being anything but repulsed. Things are supposed to be better now. Men are supposed to come home and do what Dick has done—find a respectable job, do it respectably well, embrace life as a civilian because it’s vastly preferable to those years full of death. They aren’t supposed to flounder and fumble and feel the way Nix feels, like he left the best parts of himself in some command post in war-torn Europe. 

He can’t sit there and let Dick look down at him any longer. He gets to his feet and paces a few steps away, hoping it’ll do something for his jangling nerves. “I don’t know how to be around you here,” he admits, balling his hands into fists. “I don’t want you to see me like this, but I don’t know how not to be like this. There are no more planes to jump out of.”

Dick looks genuinely confused at that. His brow furrows, and his hand twitches like he’s thinking of reaching out, but then he thinks better of it, leaving it flexing at his side. “You never had to jump out of a plane to impress me, Nix,” he says. “I’m not here because you were a good soldier.”

“Then why are you here?” Nix asks.

This time, Dick doesn’t stop himself from reaching for him. He comes around the desk and catches one of Nix’s hands, coaxes his fingers open so he can slip his own inside. “Because I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

Nix lets out a slow, shaky breath and looks down at their combined hands. He tells himself to pull away, tells himself not to trust this, but Dick sounds so sincere. It would be hard not to believe anything Dick said to him in that tone of voice, no matter how far-fetched. Still, Nix doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t think he’s going to understand no matter how Dick explains it.

“Pay the men what you think he should be paid,” he says again, hoping Dick will allow him this deflection. “Give them their raise, and I’ll sign off on it.”

Dick stiffens like he still wants to argue, but after a few moments of silence he sighs and squeezes Nix’s hand. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”

Nix nods, then makes himself withdraw his hand from Dick’s. They shouldn’t be doing this here anyway. Or anywhere.

Dick picks up the folder he brought in with him and then turns to go, but he stops before he makes it to the door. “Hey, Lew?”

Nix raises his eyebrows at Dick when he turns around. “Yeah?”

“You can be whatever kind of man you want to be, you know.”

It’s nice that Dick thinks that. It’s sweet. It melts Nix’s heart a little bit, even though if anyone else said such a thing he’d brush it off as naivete. Dick is not naive though. That alone makes Nix _almost_ believe him.

“If I ever figure out what kind of man I want to be, you’ll be the first to know,” he says, feeling like a heel even as the words are coming out of his mouth. But it seems to be enough, because Dick smiles at him and holds his gaze for a few seconds before making his exit. Nix waits until he hears his footsteps going down the hall until he reaches for the glass on his desk and downs the rest.

———

Over the next few days, he thinks a lot about the kind of man he wants to be. He knows it’s not as simple as stripping off his old self and slipping into something new, but since Dick raised the question, he can’t help but consider it. He tries to imagine himself as a man like Major Richard Winters. He thinks about giving up alcohol and finding something larger than himself to believe in. He thinks about what it would be like to give all of himself to whatever task is put in front of him.

But that’s an impossible standard to hit. It’s too far from where he is now, and anyway, the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes he doesn’t really want to be like Dick. What he wants to be is the kind of man _worthy_ of Dick, worthy of his friendship, and maybe of more than that.

The problem is, even thinking about _more than that_ makes him pretty fucking unworthy.

When Blanche comes to visit, Nix thinks he’s saved. He thinks it’ll be a good distraction from how tense things have become in the house, how he isn’t exactly avoiding Dick but isn’t throwing himself into his arms either. A little company might do them both good.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Blanche says, going to Dick as soon as she has finished hugging Nix. It’s a lie. Nix hasn’t said that much to her at all—or to anyone. He hasn’t talked about the war as much as he can help it. Still, Blanche puts on a good act. She presses Dick’s fingers between her own and smiles up at him. “I probably should thank you for looking out for Lew.”

Dick meets Nix’s eyes over Blanche’s head and smiles a little. “I think he’s the one who was looking out for me.”

Blanche’s eyes actually go a little wide at that, and she glances at Nix as if for confirmation. Nix shrugs. “I did my best not to send our men into a nest of German artillery, and in return Dick let me hide whiskey in his footlocker. Seemed like an even trade to me.”

“Knowing you, yes, that sounds about even,” Blanche says, but she is peering at him like this is the first time she’s really seeing him since he got back.

Feeling uncomfortable, Nix tugs at his collar and then herds everyone into the kitchen, hoping a change of venue will mean a change of conversation. Plus he has a chicken to check on. And drinks to pour.

Dinner is pleasant enough. Blanche asks how Dick is enjoying working for Nixon Nitration and manages not to look surprised when he says he likes it. She tells stories about her time in Florida and shares some mundane gossip about old friends in the city. Nix talks a little about Stanhope and how business is going, though he keeps it to a minimum because he knows Blanche doesn’t care much about either. 

Dick seems to take a shine Blanche. He laughs at her jokes and listens intently when she speaks, even when she’s talking about people or things he doesn’t know anything about. Part of it is probably just his usual politeness, but Nix can read him well enough by now to know his interest is genuine. To his surprise, Nix finds it comforting. For a multitude of reasons, it’s been hard to imagine Dick meshing well with various parts of his life, but he got along well with Stanhope and now he’s hitting it off with Blanche, and it feels like some of the frayed edges of Nix’s life are knitting themselves together. 

The only slight hiccup comes when Blanche asks about Kathy and the baby, and Nix can feel Dick’s gaze hot on the side of his face while he skims right past it, giving a non-answer and changing the subject. When he sees Dick and Blanche share a strangely knowing look, his stomach gives an uneasy little flip. The last thing he needs is the two of them teaming up.

Once their plates are all clean, Dick insists on clearing the table and doing the dishes, and Blanche asks Nix to come outside with her for a cigarette. Out on the back porch, she sits on the railing and Nix leans next to her. He lights two cigarettes before passing her one. They don’t speak for a little while, but the hair on the back of Nix’s neck starts to stand up. He has a feeling he knows what she’s going to say.

“He seems worried about you,” Blanche says at least, exhaling smoke in his direction. “Should I be worried about you?”

“No one should be worried about me,” Nix grumbles. “I can take care of myself.”

“Can you?” Before he has a chance to answer, she exhales a cloud of smoke and nudges his leg with her heel. “You should see your daughter, Lewis.”

“Oh, don’t start,” he says, straightening up and turning around so he doesn’t have to see the concern on her face. “If Kathy wanted me to see her, she’d say so.”

“Maybe she’s waiting for you to ask.”

“She’ll be waiting a long time then.” Through the kitchen window, Nix can see Dick standing at the sink, his head bent, his shoulders bunching as he scrubs the dishes. He’s probably thinking the same thing, Nix thinks. He’s probably wondering what kind of person doesn’t fight to keep his family together. “Anyway,” Nix says, “I don’t know how to be a father.”

Blanche sniffs. “No one knows to start with.”

“Yeah, well, most men probably had a better example than I did.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Blanche slides down off the railing and nudges his chest with the side of her fist, her cigarette pointed carefully away from his shirt. Nix looks down at her and thinks about when they were younger, when she wanted to go everywhere he went and do everything he did. She would come down to the park and watch him put his boats in the water. When he tried to go off on his own, she would grab hold of his arm and refuse to let go. She has that same look on her face now.

“You’re not Dad, Lew. Not in the slightest.”

Nix grimaces at her. “How do you figure that?”

“You’re a soldier, for one.”

“I _was_ a soldier.”

“And a good one, according to your friend in there. And speaking of that…” Blanche glances at the window, then pauses to puff at her cigarette. “Speaking of that, you came back, and you brought him with you.”

“I had nowhere else to go,” he says, and he means it. He can’t imagine what else he would be doing right now. Making a career out of the Army? Not a chance. Not without Dick.

“Did he?” Blanche asks.

Nix looks at her sharply at that, trying to decide if there’s a hidden meaning he’s missing there. “He did. A farm in Pennsylvania.”

“But he’s here. And so are you.”

She’s right, even if she doesn’t know how she’s right. Nix is still at a loss about why Dick chose to come here and work for him, but it’s not as though he’s holding him against his will.

“All I’m saying is that it seems like you’re selling yourself a little short,” Blanche says, turning to lean up against the railing next to Nix. “You know, you never really brought friends home. Even when you were younger. You’d run around with other boys sometimes, but you never seemed to get close. And now here you are with Major Dick Winters in there washing your dishes.”

Nix flicks ash on the porch and then rubs at the back of his neck. “What happened over there...you get close to people. It’s just how it is.”

That doesn’t even begin to cover his relationship with Dick, but he can’t explain it to her. Not really.

The sink quits running inside and then Dick is there at the back door, smiling at them through the glass. He comes out onto the porch, still wiping his hands on the back of his pants, and looks back and forth between them like he expects he’s interrupting something. But Nix is happy to be interrupted. He’s had more than enough sage wisdom from his baby sister.

“I just wanted to say good night,” Dick says, looking at Blanche. “It was good to—”

“Oh no!” Blanche cries. She stubs out her cigarette on the porch and combs her fingers through her hair, as if it wasn’t already perfect. “No, I won’t have you turning in early. Not when we’re just getting to know each other! Do you boys have any cards?”

Dick shoots Nix an amused look, and all Nix can do is shrug. If Dick wants to try to stand up for himself, he’s on his own. But instead he smiles gamely and nods. “I think I saw a deck lying around somewhere.”

Blanche ropes them into several hands of Crazy Eights. They play in the living room, using the ottoman as a table. Nix keeps drinking, and so does Blanche, and it isn’t long before she’s reduced to giggles at the slightest provocation and listing to the side enough that Dick must be able to see her whole hand. Nix never catches him looking—not at the cards, and not at anything else his sister might have to offer.

She must notice too, because eventually she peers at Dick and asks, “Are you a single man, Dick?”

The light is low in the room, but Nix still sees the tips of Dick’s ears go red. This is the moment he knew would come. This is the moment when Dick is going to realize that the things he thinks he wants don’t make sense in the real world. Nix braces for it.

“I am,” Dick says, but then he meets Nix’s eyes and his mouth quirks with amusement.

“You should be fixing him up, Lewis,” Blanche says, hitting his arm. Then, she seems to get a better idea and looks back at Dick. “Or I could. I have some friends who I think could go for a redhead.”

“Oh, lay off of him, Blanche,” Nix says irritably. This time, when Blanche looks at him, her gaze seems clearer than it should be given all the whiskey in her system. She fans herself with her cards while she watches him, then grins a pleased little grin, like Nix just confirmed something for her. The thought makes his stomach roll.

“Why, Lew, do you have someone in mind for him already?”

“Maybe I do,” he says.

“Actually, I’m still trying to get my feet under me here,” Dick says. “I don’t think I could even think about settling down until I’ve built up my savings. Maybe found a place of my own.”

Blanche tilts her head to the side, considering that. “But if you move out, who will keep my poor brother company?”

The two of them look at each other for a long moment, and Nix has an uncomfortable feeling, like they’re talking about him behind his back in front of his face. He waits for the axe to fall, waits for the moment when Blanche admits she’s figured it all out. But instead Dick grins and shakes his head at her, like she’s trapped him and he’s impressed by it.

“You have a point there,” he says.

Blanche giggles and reaches out to give Dick’s wrist a squeeze. “Of course I do.”

Nix isn’t sure what just happened, but he doesn’t think he likes it. He drains the last of what’s in his glass and then waves his hand at Blanche, who’s still caressing Dick’s arm like he’s her new favorite pet.

“It’s your go, sis,” he mumbles. Dick looks at him, and his smile gets wider, and despite the nervous thudding of his heart, Nix can’t help but smile back.

———

When Nix comes back from setting his sister up in his bedroom, Dick is still there, sitting on the floor and leaning up against the coffee table. The ottoman has been pushed back to its rightful spot. The fire is dying in the hearth.

“You get her all settled?” Dick asks as Nix drops down onto the floor beside him.

Blanche imbibed a little too much to make it back to her apartment tonight, so Nix is being the gentleman and giving up his bed. Not that it’s much of a hardship. He doesn’t think he’ll ever complain about sleeping on a couch again.

“Yeah, she’s snug as a bug. Almost fell asleep with her shoes on. I’m sure she’ll be embarrassed in the morning.”

Dick flaps his hand dismissively. “I like her,” he says. “She reminds me of you.”

“Oh yeah?” Nix asks, but he’s not surprised given the circumstances. He wonders if he should be embarrassed in the morning too. He’s lost the ability to tell. And anyway, it’s just Dick. 

“Yeah.” Dick smiles a little. “She’s got your sense of humor. And your eyes.”

“My mom’s eyes,” Nix corrects.

Dick seems to think about that for a moment, his eyes wandering over Nix’s face. He unfolds his legs so they stretching out next to Nix’s and knocks their feet together. “I’d like to meet her too. Your mother.”

Nix snorts at that. “Yeah? And you want me to meet your parents too? Want to introduce me as your beau? The guy you’re playing house with?”

The flare of hurt in Dick’s eyes comes and goes in an instant, fast enough that anyone but Nix might have missed it. “We’re not playing house, Nix.”

“Not now, but you want to be. You still…” Nix sighs and scrubs his hand over his face, then looks away. “You want something from me, Dick.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Dick insists, lowering his voice. “Nothing you don’t want to give.”

That’s a laugh. What Nix wants is irrelevant, always has been, and not just in this. He tries to think of the last time he let himself go after anything he really wanted, anything important, and he comes up empty.

Then he thinks about that day in Berchtesgaden, that golden morning when he asked Dick to come to New Jersey with him.

“I don’t have a hell of a lot to give,” he says. He keeps his eyes trained on the carpet, and feels cowardly for it.

“Whatever you have is good enough,” Dick says. “Always has been.”

Nix wants to argue. He wants to say it’s different now. The kinds of things a man needs when he’s fighting a war aren’t the same kinds of things he needs when he’s at home. Then, it was enough that he could make Dick smile or open a can he couldn’t open. His drinking didn’t matter, and he was doing something that Dick could respect him for. This might as well be a completely different world.

 _But he’s here_ , Blanche’s voice says in his head. And anyway, Nix is a little tired of fighting.

When he turns his head, Dick is there to meet him, his mouth as devastating as Nix remembers it. Nix keeps his eyes open long enough to see that there are even freckles on Dick’s eyelids, but he shuts them soon after, because it’s too much. There are a hundred questions running through his mind, things he never would have wondered about with any of the girls he’s been with—or any of the other guys for that matter. How many people has Dick kissed? How many men, if any? What exactly does he want? How much? How far?

But Nix pushes those questions away, because he knows none of them would matter to Dick. It’s strange that Dick has been so calm about this, so certain, like he’s just waiting for Nix to catch up, but it also isn’t strange at all. Nix tries to let that certainty comfort him now, imagines it bleeding into him from the places they are touching—Dick’s fingers on his jaw, his own hand on Dick’s knee.

“How can you stand that stuff?” Dick mumbles against his cheek, his mouth curved into a smile. It takes him a moment to realize he’s talking about the whiskey, which must be all he can taste in Nix’s mouth.

“You get used to it,” he says, then puts two fingers on Dick’s jaw to fit their mouths back together, because he wants to get used to this too. 

———

He ends up in front of Dick’s door without meaning to. It’s near midnight, and Dick turned in a couple hours ago, which means it’s the best time to sneak out to the liquor cabinet and pour a little sleeping draught. But here he is instead, holding his breath so he can listen through the door, wondering if Dick is as light as sleeper now as he used to be.

He reaches for the doorknob, but his fingers are stiff, like they used to get during those cold winter nights out in the Bois Jacques. It’s not too late to continue down the hall, but this feels like something he has to do, if for no other reason than to see if Dick really knows what he’s asking for. They can make eyes at each other across the dinner table and talk about the future like it’s something they’ll share, but a man needs more than words and glances.

The door creaks when he pushes it open, the sound raising goosebumps on the back of his neck. Moonlight shines through the window above the bed, but it still takes his eyes a minute to map out Dick’s body, the topography of it, the differences in elevation that indicate toes and knees and hips. Dick’s eyes are open, and as Nix watches, he pushes himself up on his elbows, his eyebrows pulling together in concern.

“Nix?” he asks, but not because he doesn’t know who it is. It’s funny, Nix thinks, how a person’s name can ask as a stand-in for so many different questions. That morning it meant, _Do you want any more coffee?_ Now it means, _Is everything alright?_

“Were you asleep?” Nix half-whispers.

“Not really.” Dick shifts like he’s going to sit all the way up, but then he seems to think better of it. “Were you?”

Nix rubs the back of his neck. “No. I was gonna have a nightcap.”

The furrow between Dick’s eyebrows grows. “Looking for company?”

He is, but not for the nightcap, and he’s not sure how to say that. All he can do is shake his head and hold Dick’s gaze and hope that he gets the message somehow, like he always does. It takes a second, but then Dick’s forehead smooths out and Nix thinks he sees a hint of a smile.

“Come here,” he says, shifting over on the bed and lifting up the covers.

Before he has a chance to talk himself out of it. Nix crosses the room and climbs in next to him. It’s warm, even with the cold air he let in when he got into bed. Without thinking about it, he follows the heat right up into Dick’s personal space, and he ends up a little shocked when Dick is suddenly looking at him from an inch away. The moonlight seems to be coming through the window just so it can fall on him, and it’s turned his eyelashes silver.

“You okay?” he asks.

Nix has to close his eyes for a moment, so he doesn’t say something stupid. The softness in Dick’s voice and the concern in his gaze are a little too much to take all at once. “I’m okay,” he confirms, then opens his eyes again. “Better, even.”

“Is that so?” Dick smiles outright, and he shifts closer until their legs are brushing together. He’s hot as a furnace. Nix wants to press against him until he forgets what it feels like to be cold.

“It’s so. And you can quit looking so damn smug about it.” But Nix can’t really be petulant, not now.

Dick just smiles even wider, and then he’s surging forward and pushing Nix onto his back, rolling on top of him and bracketing Nix’s head with his forearms. It’s so unexpected that Nix can only laugh, part nervous and part turned on and a whole lot happier than he thought he’d be when he was in the doorway a minute ago.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” he asks, his hands finding Dick’s waist.

Dick raises his eyebrows at him. “Do you?”

Nix thinks about the guys back at Yale. He thinks about the man from Dog Company who caught his eye at Toccoa, but only because it was a better alternative to admitting he liked spending time with Dick a little too much. None of that seems relevant now though. He knows what Dick’s asking, but he answers a different question instead.

“I don’t have the faintest clue.”

“It’s okay,” Dick murmurs. He lifts one hand and strokes Nix’s hair back off his forehead. “We’ll figure it out.” 

———

In late March, the dogwoods start to bloom. They pass the park on their drive to work every morning, and Dick always turns his head to stare out the window at the kaleidoscope of pink and green. “The trees don’t bloom like this back home,” he explains when he catches Nix looking at him fondly and with no small amount of amusement. Once the weather gets nicer, Nix thinks they might spend a Saturday walking under those trees and around the pond. They could invite Blanche down to be their camouflage.

They have one of those dogwoods in their backyard too, pressed up against the back corner of the fence with its flower-laden fingers stretching out over the neighbors’ yards. Nix would probably just see it as a nuisance, given that they might get asked to trim it back when it starts dumping flower petals all over other people’s lawns, but Dick of course takes a shine to it. One morning, Nix glances out the back window and sees Dick sitting there under it, writing on something in his lap.

Nix abandons the mug he was about to fill with coffee and steps out the back door, then starts across the yard. Dick doesn’t look up until Nix is almost on top of him, and when he does, Nix lets out a quiet, awed breath. The sunlight filtering through the tree branches is making Dick glow. His mouth slants into a half-smile and he puts down his pen and creases the letter he was writing. He gestures for Nix to sit down next to him.

“I was going to mow the yard, but then I realized you don’t have a mower,” Dick says, as if he needs to explain the fact that he’s sitting out here taking it easy. Or not even taking it easy. Writing letters, which counts as work to Nix.

Nix lowers himself down so he’s sitting with his back against the tree trunk and he and Dick are nearly at right angles to each other, their shoulders just barely brushing. “You don’t need to mow the lawn. I can mow the lawn.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“Is anything ever any trouble for you, Dick?” Nix asks, looking sideways at him. Dick smiles and shakes his head. He taps the edges of the pages in his lap to straighten them all up, then sets them next to him in the grass and drapes his arms over his knees.

“I was writing to Harry. We need to respond about the wedding,” he says, glancing at Nix and then away again.

“Well, of course we’re going,” Nix says. “Right?”

Dick’s smile is a little shy, like he wasn’t quite sure. “Right. Of course.” He looks like he has something more to say, so Nix waits him out. “I was thinking...we could drive up, and maybe stop off in Lancaster first.”

Nix forces down the panic that threatens to rise up the back of his throat like bile. This is a good moment, he tells himself. This is one he should remember—sitting in the grass, in the sunshine, a cloud of flowers above their heads, making plans months ahead of time like it’s the most natural thing in the world. There are still so many ways Nix could screw this up, but it would be a shame to ruin this moment. Or the next one. Or the one after that. Maybe the secret is to take all of this one moment at a time.

“That sounds fine to me,” he says.

“You’re sure?” Dick asks. “It’s just a suggestion. We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

A pale pink petal flutters down and lands in Dick’s hair, and Nix chuckles and reaches out to brush it away. His fingers skim down the side of Dick’s face before they withdraw, his thumb sneaking a quick swipe across Dick’s bottom lip.

“I’m sure, Dick,” he says. It feels good to say the words, so he draws a deep breath, smiles, and says them again. “I’m sure.”


End file.
